Sharing Horizons That Are New To Us

Happy 43rd Anniversary
To Peggy & Ron Rosenbluth!

"This road leads where your heart is . . ."

Soloist Jim Goldsby ~ "We've Only Just Begun" ~ Peg & Ron

When I asked my son Sam (recent graduate of Purdue University ~ see previous post) for some good song ideas, one of his suggestions was "Red Light." So we've been playing that one a lot lately and realized that it was also the perfect wedding anniversary song for my sister and brother - in - law.

Auntie Peg wrote: "Very nice song. Thanks for the suggestion Sam! Very low-key anniversary but I'm fine with that. Our wedding song was "We've Only Just Begun" sung by our friend Jim Goldsby, although if I was getting married today I think I would use Sam's song suggestion instead. I liked The Carpenters but that song sounds so saccharin sweet now that it makes my teeth hurt." That's okay Peg! It was the 20th Century -- a time of innocence, speaking of which, here's another old favorite: "One Love". We were all in love with The Carpenters back then and just couldn't help ourselves!

Thanks goodness for our 2st Century kids and grandkids, keeping us young with their music and poetry! Now we have a new song for new times, but it's interesting to note how similar the message of "Red Lights" (2013) is to that of "We've Only Just Begun" (1970):

Before the risin' sun, we fly
So many roads to choose
We'll start out walkin' and learn to run
And yes, we've just begun

Sharing horizons that are new to us
Watching the signs along the way
Talkin' it over, just the two of us
Workin' together day to day [emphasis added]

Red Lights
Performed by Tiesto & Michel Zitron

Blacked out, everything's faded
On your love I’m already wasted
So close that I can taste it now... now...

So let’s break right out of these gilded cages
We’re gonna make it now...
Don’t ever turn around
Don’t ever turn around

Nobody else needs to know
Where we might go...
We could just run them red lights
We could just run them red lights

There ain’t no reason to stay
We’ll be light years away...
We could just run them red lights
We could just run them red lights

We could just run them red lights...
We could just run them red lights...

White lights, flirt in the darkness
This road leads where your heart is
These signs, something we can’t ignore...no...

We can’t back down
We’ll never let them change us
We’re gonna make it now
What are we waiting for...
What are we waiting for...

Nobody else needs to know
Where we might go...
We could just run them red lights
We could just run them red lights

There ain’t no reason to stay
We’ll be light years away...
We could just run them red lights
We could just run them red lights

We could just run them red lights...
We could just run them red lights... [emphasis added]

Co - written by Tijs Michiel Verwest (Tiesto)
with Carl Falk, Wayne Hector, Rami Yacoub, Måns Wredenberg

If Only In My Dreams

Outside Looking In
I still love to hear Karen Carpenter sing "I'll Be Home For Christmas, If Only In My Dreams," but I feel differently about this song than I used to. I used to think it was about people who weren't able to travel "home for the holidays" to be with everyone else. Now I'm more inclined to think it's about people who have to travel or have traveled, when all they really want is the privacy of their own home. There they are surrounded by all their loved ones, but what they crave is to be home alone -- if only in their dreams.

Not to be all bah - humbug about it, but now whenever I hear lyrics like "I'll Be Home for Christmas" or "There's No Place Like Home for the Holidays" or "There's No Christmas Like Home Christmas," my response is Precisely! Home. H - O - M - E. Not someone else's home. Not someplace that used to be home. Your own home. Where your heart is. As John Denver sings:

"Home is where the heart is,
and Christmas lives there too."
This excerpt is from my latest fortnightly post
"Divine Homesickness: If Only In My Dreams"

Read more on
The Fortnightly Kitti Carriker:
A Fortnightly [every 14th & 28th] Literary Blog of
Connection & Coincidence; Custom & Ceremony

Photos ~ 12 December 2011

The Still Small Voice of Heaven

Early November Crescent Moon, Just Before Dawn
Photographed by my contemplative cousin,
Maggie Mesneak Wick
SONG ABOUT THE CRESCENT MOON:
Crescent Noon
[or is it Moon? You decide!]*
(Click title for music video)

Green September
Burned to October brown
Bare November
Led to December's frozen ground
The seasons stumbled round
Our drifting lives are bound
To a falling crescent noon

Feather clouds cry
A vale of tears to earth
Morning breaks and
No one sees the quiet mountain birth
Dressed in a brand new day
The sun is on its way
To a falling crescent noon

Somewhere in
A fairytale forest lies one
Answer that is waiting to be heard

You and I were
Born like the breaking day
All our seasons
All our green Septembers
Burn away
Slowly we'll fade into
A sea of midnight blue
And a falling crescent noon

Song by John Bettis and Richard Carpenter
Sung by Karen Carptenter (1950 - 1983)
American singer and drummer

*Though I could swear that Karen is always singing "Noon," in their printed matter, the Carpenters themselves refer to this song sometimes as "Noon" sometimes as "Moon." If anyone knows why the duplicity, please tell!

POEM ABOUT THE CRESCENT MOON:
Behind Me—dips Eternity

Behind Me—dips Eternity—
Before Me—Immortality—
Myself—the Term between—
Death but the Drift of Eastern Gray,
Dissolving into Dawn away,
Before the West begin—

'Tis Kingdoms—afterward—they say—
In perfect—pauseless Monarchy—
Whose Prince—is Son of None—
Himself—His Dateless Dynasty—
Himself—Himself diversify—
In Duplicate divine—

'Tis Miracle before Me—then—
'Tis Miracle behind—between—
A Crescent in the Sea—
With Midnight to the North of Her—
And Midnight to the South of Her—
And Maelstrom—in the Sky—

Emily Dickinson (1830 - 86)
Reclusive American Poet

I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day

Image from Harper's Weekly: "Christmas Eve, 1862"
While perusing my Christmas anthologies, I learned that "I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day" by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was written as a commentary on the American Civil War. Though I've known this song since childhood, I had never seen the lengthier version, two stanzas longer than usually printed (stanzas 3 & 4 below). Lamenting a Nation divided, these lines from 1863, also seem sadly relevant now.

click to read
The Story of Pain and Hope Behind
"I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day"*

and to

hear an unusual haunting rendition of the carol
As a brooding, existentialist teenager, I always hung on to that stanza about despair (# 5 below; usually #3 in the sung version), although it was never exactly clear to me how it fit into the rest of the song. Now, seeing the entire context, it makes a lot more sense. What do you think?

The complete poem:

I heard the bells on Christmas Day
Their old familiar carols play,
And wild and sweet
The words repeat
Of peace on earth, good will to men!

I thought, as now the day had come,
The belfries of all Christendom
Had rolled along
The unbroken song
Of peace on earth, good will to men!

Then from each black, accursed mouth
The cannon thundered in the South
And with the sound
The carols drowned
Of peace on earth, good will to men!

It was as if an earthquake rent
The hearthstones of a continent,
And made forlorn
The households born
Of peace on earth, good will to men!

And in despair I bowed my head:
"There is no peace on earth," I said;
"For hate is strong
And mocks the song
Of peace on earth, good will to men!"

Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:
"God is not dead, nor doth He sleep!
The Wrong shall fail
The Right prevail
With peace on earth, good will to men!"

Till ringing, singing on its way,
The world revolved from night to day
A voice, a chime
A chant sublime
Of peace on earth, good will to men!

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 1807 - 1882
most popular, beloved, and successful American poet of his day

~ the story behind the song, narrated by Ed Herman

~ as sung by Karen Carpenter

When I shared these stanzas with my family, my Uncle Gene wrote back to say, "That's simply astounding. I had no idea of verses 3 and 4. On reading them, you can see why, maybe they were never publicized. All the same, they give more meaning to the last ones when read following the brutal war verses." My brother Dave added that after seeing "the extended play version, yes, I agree that all the stanzas together make a much more coherent picture. As a matter of fact, I would say that it was very observant of you as a young lass to have noticed the not too obvious discordance of the work without the 'extra' stanzas." Writing not long after the United States invasion of Afghanistan, Dave suggested that "To take liberties with Henry's work, one could gently alter the third stanza by replacing mouth with beast and South with East, making it more topical, albeit no better."

Thanks to Dave and Uncle Gene for these remarks;
and also to my brother Bruce for the link above from
*The Gospel Coalition.

And while we're on the topic of despair, and bells,
and right and wrong:
"I ask you...to adopt the principles proclaimed by yourselves,
by your revolutionary fathers,
and by the old bell in Independence Hall."

by Frederick Douglass, 1818 - 1895
American abolitionist, women's suffragist, author,
editor, orator, reformer, and great statesman

from an address delivered at the Southern Loyalists' Convention
in Philadelphia, 1866